561 
N5S7 



MARX HE KNEW 



By JOHN SPARGO 




Class H B^I 

Book Ms-sy 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Marx He Knew 




KARL MARX. 



The Marx He Knew 



JOHN SPARGO 



Author of "The Bitter Cry of the Children," "Social- 
ism, A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist 
Principles," "The Common Sense of 
Socialism," "Karl Marx: His 
Life and Work," Etc., 
Etc., Etc. 



CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 

1909 



6Vb"\ 



V% 



Copyright, 1909 
$y Charles H. Kerr & Company 



.(521 



TO 

MADAME LAURA LAFARGUE 

DAUGHTER OF KARL MARX 



List of Illustrations 

Karl Marx, From a Photograph - Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

His Birthplace at Trier, From an Old 

Print -_-----.-- 10 

Johanna Bertha Julie von Westphalen, 

From a Painting From Life - 19 

Frederick Engels, From a Photograph - 32 

Ferdinand Lassalle, From a Photograph - 47 

The Marx Family Grave, From a Photo- 
graph ---------83 



THE MARX HE KNEW 



The pale, yellow light of the waning 
day streamed through the dusty window 
panes of the little cigar shop, and across 
the bench where old Hans Fritzsche 
worked and hummed the melody of Der 
Freiheit the while. 

The Young Comrade who sat in the 
corner upon a three-legged stool seemed 
not to hear the humming. His eyes were 
fixed upon a large photograph of a man 
which hung in a massive oak frame 
above the bench where Old Hans rolled 
cigars into shape. The photograph was 
old and faded, and the written inscrip- 
tion beneath it was scarcely legible. The 
gaze of the Young Comrade was wistful 
and reverent. 

[7] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

"Tell me about him, Hans," he said 
at last. 

Old Hans stopped humming and 
looked at the Young Comrade. Then 
his eyes wandered to the portrait and 
rested upon it in a gaze that was like- 
wise full of tender reverence. 

Neither spoke again for several sec- 
onds and only the monotonous ticking 
of the clock upon the wall broke the op- 
pressive silence. 

"Ach! he was a wonderful man, my 
comrade," said Old Hans at length. 

"Yes, yes, he was a wonderful man — 
one of the most wonderful men that ever 
lived," responded the Young Comrade 
in a voice that was vibrant with relig- 
ious enthusiasm. 

Both were silent again for a moment 
and then the Young Comrade contin- 
ued : "Yes, Marx was a wonderful man, 
Hans. And you knew him — saw him 

[8] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

smile — heard him speak — clasped his 
hand — called him comrade and friend !" 

"Aye, many times, many times," an- 
swered Old Hans, nodding. "Hundreds 
of times did we smoke and drink to- 
gether — me and him." 

"Ah, that was a glorious privilege, 
Hans," said the Young Comrade fer- 
vently. "To hear him speak and touch 
his hand — the hand that wrote such 
great truths for the poor working peo- 
ple — I would have gladly died, Hans. 
Why, even when I touch your hand now, 
and think that it held his hand so often, 
I feel big — strong — inspired." 

"Ach, but my poor old hand is noth- 
ing," answered Old Hans with a depre- 
cating smile. "Touching the hand of 
such a man matters nothing at all, for 
genius is not contagious like the small- 
pox," he added. 

"But tell me about him, Hans," plead- 

[9] 



THE MAEX HE KNEW 

ed the Young Comrade again. "Tell me 
how he looked and spoke — tell me every- 
thing." 

"Well, you see, we played together as 
boys in the Old Country, in Treves. 
Many a time did we fight then! Once 
he punched my eye and made it swell 
up so that I could hardly see at all, but 
I punched his nose and made it bleed 
like — well, like a pig." 

"What! you made him bleed?" 

"Ach! that was not much; all boys 
fight so." 

"Well?" 

"My father was a shoemaker, you see, 
and we lived not far away from where 
Karl's people lived. Many a time my 
father sent me to their house — on the 
Bruckergrasse — with mended shoes. 
Then I would see Karl, who was just as 
big as I was, but not so old by a year. 

[10] 




BIRTHPLACE OF KARL MARX. 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

Such a fine boy! Curly-headed he was, 
and fat — like a little barrel almost. 

"So, when I took the shoes sometimes 
I would stop and play with him a bit — 
play with Karl and the girls. He was 
always playing with girls — with his sis- 
ter, Sophie, and little Jenny von West- 
phalen. 

"Sometimes I liked it not so — playing 
with girls. They were older than we 
boys and wanted everything to go their 
way, and I liked not that girls should 
boss boys. So once I teased him about 
it — told him that he was a baby to play 
with girls. Then it was that we fought 
and he gave me a black eye and I gave 
him a bloody nose in return. 

"Sometimes the Old Man, Karl's 
father, would come into my father's 
shop and stay a long while chatting. He 
was a lawyer and father only a shoe- 
maker; he was quite rich, while father 

[HI 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

was poor, terribly poor. But it made no 
difference to Herr Marx. He would 
chat with father by the hour. 

"You see, he was born a Jew, but — 
before Karl was born — he turned Chris- 
tian. Father had done the same thing, 
years before I was born. Why he did 
it father would never tell me, but once 
I heard him and Heinrich Marx — that 
was the name of Karl's father — talking 
about it, so I got a pretty good idea of 
the reason. 

" 'Of course, I am not a believer in the 
Christian doctrines, friend Wilhelm. , 
he said to my father. 'I don't believe 
that Jesus was God, nor that he was a 
Messiah from God. But I do believe in 
a God — in one God and no more. 

" 'And I'm not so dishonorable as to 
have become a Christian, and to have 
had my children baptized as Christians, 
simply to help me in my profession/ he 

[12] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

said. 'Some of our Hebrew friends have 
said that, but it is not true at all. As 
I see it, friend Wilhelm, Judaism is too 
narrow, too conservative. Christianity 
makes for breadth, for culture, for free- 
dom. And it is keeping to ourselves, a 
people set apart, which makes us Jews 
hated and despised, strangers in the 
land. To become one with all our fel- 
low citizens, to break down the walls 
of separation, is what we need to aim 
at. That is why I forsook Judaism, 
Wilhelm/ 

"From the way that father nodded his 
head and smiled I could tell, though he 
said little, that he was the same sort of 
a Christian." 

"But it was about him, the son, that 
you were speaking, Hans." 

"Ach, be patient. Time is more plen- 
tiful than money, boy," responded Hans, 
somewhat testily. 

[13] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

"Well, of course, we went to the same 
school, and though Karl was younge^ 
than me we were in the same class. Such 
a bright, clever fellow he was ! Always 
through with his lessons before any of 
the rest of us, he was, and always at 
the top of the class. And the stories he 
could tell, lad! Never did I hear such 
stories. In the playground before school 
opened we used to get around him and 
make him tell stories till our hair stood 
on end." 

"And was his temper cheerful and 
good — was he well liked?" asked the 
Young Comrade. 

"Liked? He was the favorite of the 
whole school, teachers and all, my boy. 
Never was he bad tempered or mean. 
Nobody ever knew Karl to do a bad 
thing. But he was full of mischief and 
good-hearted fun. He loved to play 



THE MAEX HE KNEW 

tricks upon other boys, and sometimes 
upon the teachers, too. 

"He could write the funniest verses 
about people you ever heard in your life, 
and sometimes all the boys and girls in 
Hie school would be shouting his rhymes 
as they went through the streets. If 
another boy did anything to him, Karl 
would write some verses that made the 
fellow look like a fool, and we would all 
recite them just to see the poor fellow 
get mad. Such fun we had then. But, 
I tell you, we were awfully afraid of 
Karl's pin-pricking verses! 

"Once, I remember well, we had a 
bad-tempered old teacher. He was a 
crabbed old fellow, and all the boys got 
to hate him. Always using the rod, he 
was. Karl said to me one day as we 
were going home from school: 'The 
crooked old sinner ! I'll make him wince 
with some verses before long, Hans/ 

[15] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

and then we both laughed till we were 
sore." 

"And did he write the verses?" asked 
the Young Comrade. 

"Write them? I should say he did! 
You didn't know Karl, or you would 
never ask such a question as that. Next 
morning, when we got in school, Karl 
handed around a few copies of his poem 
about old Herr von Hoist, and pretty 
soon we were all tittering. The whole 
room was in a commotion. 

"Of course, the teacher soon found 
out what was wrong and Karl was 
called outside and asked to explain about 
them. 'I'm a poet, Herr teacher/ he 
said, 'and have a poet's license. You 
must not ask a poet to explain.' Of 
course, we all laughed at that, and the 
poor Herr von Hoist was like a great 
mad bull." 

"And was he disciplined?" 

[16] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

'To be sure he was ! His father was 
very angry, too. But what did we care 
about that? We sang the verses on the 
streets, and wrote them on the walls or 
anywhere else that we could. We made 
it so hot for the poor teacher that he 
had to give up and leave the town. I 
wish I could remember the verses, but 
I never was any good for remembering 
poetry, and it was a long, long time ago 
—more than three score years ago now. 

"We thought it was funny that Karl 
never gave over playing with the girls 
— his sister and Jenny von Westphalen. 
When we were all big boys and ashamed 
to be seen playing with girls, he would 
play with them just the same, and 
sometimes when we asked him to play 
with us he would say, 'No, boys, I'm 
going to play with Jenny and Sophie 
this afternoon/ We'd be mad enough 
at this, for he was a good fellow to have 

[17] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

in a game, and sometimes we would try 
to tease him out of it. But he could 
call names better than we could, and 
then we were all afraid of his terrible 
verses. So we let him alone lest he 
make us look silly with his poetry. 

"Well, I left school long before Karl 
did. My father was poor, you see, and 
there were nine of us children to feed 
and clothe, so I had to go to work. But 
I always used to be hearing of Karl's 
cleverness. People would talk about 
him in father's shop and say, That boy 
Marx will be a Minister of State some 
day.' 

"By and by we heard that he had gone 
to Bonn, to the University, and every- 
body thought that he would soon become 
a great man. Father was puzzled when 
Heinrich Marx came in one day and 
talked very sadly about Karl. He said 
that Karl had wasted all his time at 

[18] 




JOHANNA BERTHA JULIE 
WESTPHALEN, 



JENNY VON 



~.^ 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

Bonn and learned nothing, only getting 
into a bad scrape and spending a lot of 
money. Father tried to cheer him up, 
but he was not to be comforted. 'My 
Karl — the child in whom all my hopes 
were centered — the brightest boy in 
Treves — is a failure/ he said over and 
over again. 

"Soon after that Karl came home and 
I saw him nearly every day upon the 
streets. He was most always with Jen- 
ny von Westphalen, and people smiled 
and nodded their heads when the two 
passed down the street. My! What a 
handsome couple they made ! Jenny was 
the beauty of. the town, and all the ybung 
men were crazy about her. They wrote 
poems about her and called her all the 
names of the goddesses, but she had no 
use for any of the fellows except Karl. 
And he was as handsome a fellow as 
ever laughed into a girl's eyes. He was 

[19] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

tall and straight as a line, and had the 
most wonderful eyes I ever saw in my 
life. They seemed to dance whenever 
he smiled, but sometimes they flashed 
fire — when he was vexed, I mean. 
But I suppose that what the girls liked 
best was his great mass of coal black 
curls. 

"The girls raved about Karl, and he 
could have had them all at his feet if 
he would. I know, for I had two sis- 
ters older than myself, and I heard how 
they and their friends used to talk about 
him. But Karl had no eyes for any girl 
but Jenny, except it was his sister. 

"Folks all said that Karl and Jenny 
would marry. Rachel — that's my oldest 
sister — said so one night at the supper 
table, but our good mother laughed at 
her. 'No, Rachel, they'll never marry,' 
she said. 'Jenny might be willing 
enough, but the old Baron will never let 

[20] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

her do it. Karl's father is rich alongside 
of poor people like us, but poor enough 
compared with Jenny's father. Karl is 
no match for the beautiful Jenny/ 

"Then father spoke up. 'You forget, 
mother, that Heinrich Marx is the best 
friend that old Baron von Westphalen 
has, and that the Baron is as fond of 
Karl as of Jenny. And anyway he loves 
Jenny so much that he'd be sure to let 
her marry whoever she loved, even if 
the man had not a thaler to his name.' 

"Soon Karl went away again to the 
University at Berlin, not back to Bonn. 
Thought he'd get on better at Berlin, 
I suppose. He might have been gone a 
year or more when his father came into 
father's little shop one day while I was 
there. He said that Karl wasn't doing 
as well at Berlin as he had expected. 
He tried to laugh it off, saying that the 
boy was in love and would probably 

[21] 



THE MAEX HE KNEW 

settle down to work soon and come out 
all right, upon top as usual. 

"It was then that we learned for the 
first time that Karl and Jenny were 
betrothed, and that the old Baron had 
given his blessing to his daughter and 
her lover. Very soon all the gossips 
of the town were talking about it. 
Some said that there had been quite a 
romance about it; that the young folks 
had been secretly engaged for nearly a 
year, being afraid that the Baron 
would object. 'Twas even said that Karl 
had been made ill by the strain of keep- 
ing the secret. Then, when at last Karl 
wrote to old Westphalen about it, 
and asked for Jenny in a manly fashion, 
the old fellow laughed and said that he 
had always hoped it would turn out 
that way. So the silly young couple 
had suffered a lot of pain which they 
could have avoided. 

[22] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

"Of course, lots of folks said that it 
wasn't a 'good match/ that Jenny von 
Westphalen could have married some- 
body a lot richer than Karl; but they 
all had to admit that she couldn't get a 
handsomer or cleverer man than Karl 
in all the Rhine Province. 

"But things seemed to be going 
badly enough with Karl at the Univer- 
sity. Herr Heinrich Marx cried in our 
little shop one evening when my father 
asked him how Karl was doing. He 
said that, instead of studying hard to 
be a Doctor of Laws, as he ought to do, 
Karl was wasting his time. 'He writes 
such foolish letters that I am ashamed 
of him,' said the old man. 'Wastes his 
time writing silly verses and romances 
and then destroying most of them ; talks 
about becoming a second Goethe, and 
says he will write the great Prussian 
drama that will revive dramatic art. 

[23] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

He spends more money than the sons 
of the very rich, and I fear that he has 
got into bad company and formed evil 
habits/ 

"Then father spoke up. 'Don't be 
afraid/ he said. 'I'll wager that Karl is 
all right, and that he will do credit 
to the old town yet. Some of our great- 
est men have failed to pass their exam- 
inations in the universities you know, 
Herr Marx, while some of the most 
brilliant students have done nothing 
worthy of note after leaving the uni- 
versities crowned with laurels. There 
is nothing bad about Karl, of that you 
may be sure.' 

"The old man could hardly speak. 
He took father's hand and shook it 
heartily : 'May it be so, friend Wilhelm, 
may it be so,' he said. I never saw the 
old man again, for soon after that he 
died. 

[24] ' 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

"Karl came home that Easter, look- 
ing pale and worn and thin. I was 
shocked when he came to see me, so 
grave and sad was he. We went over 
to the old Roman ruins, and he talked 
about his plans. He had given up all 
hopes of being a great poet then and 
wanted to get a Doctors degree and 
become a Professor at the University. 
1 reminded him of the verses he wrote 
about some of the boys at school, and 
about the old teacher, Herr von Hoist, 
and we laughed like two careless boys. 
He stood upon a little mound and re- 
cited the verses all over as though they 
had been written only the week before. 
Ach, he looked grand that night in the 
beautiful moonlight! 

"Then came his father's death, and 
I did not see him again, except as the 
funeral passed by. He went back to 
Berlin to the University, and I went 

[25] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

soon after that away from home for my 
wander jahre, and for a long time heard 
nothing about Karl. 



II 



"Two or three years after that I was 
working in Cologne, where I had a 
sweetheart, when I read in a paper, the 
Rhenische Zeitung, that there would be 
a democratic meeting. I liked the demo- 
cratic ideas which I found in the paper, 
for they were all in the interest of poor 
toilers like myself. So I made up my 
mind to go to the meeting. 

"So that night I went to the meeting 
and listened to the speeches. Presently 
he came in. I didn't see him at first, 
but heard a slight noise back of me and 
heard someone near me say 'Here comes 
Doctor Marx/ Then I turned and saw 

[26] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

Karl making his way to the front, all 
eyes fastened upon him. I could see 
in a moment that he was much beloved. 

"Then Karl made a speech. He was 
not a great orator, but spoke clearly 
and right to the point in very simple 
language. The speaker who spoke be- 
fore him was very eloquent and fiery, 
and stirred the audience to a frenzy. 
But never a sound of applause greeted 
Karl's speech; he was listened to in 
perfect silence. 

"This made me feel that Karl's speech 
was a great failure, but next day I 
found that the only words I remembered 
of all that were spoken that evening 
Were the words Karl spoke. It was the 
same way with the other men in the 
shop where I worked. As they dis- 
cussed the meeting next day, it was 
Karl's speech they remembered and dis- 
cussed. That was like Karl: he had 

[27] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

a way somehow of saying things you 
couldn't forget. 

"When the meeting was over I was 
slinking away without speaking to him. 
I suppose that I was bashful and a bit 
afraid of the grave 'Doctor Marx,' the 
great man. But he saw me going out 
and shouted my name. 'Wait a minute, 
Hans Fritzsche,' he cried, and came run- 
ning to me with outstretched hands. 
Then he insisted upon introducing me 
to all the leaders. This is my good 
friend, Herr Fritzsche, with whom I 
went to school,' he said to them. 

"Nothing would satisfy him but that 
I should go with the other leaders and 
himself for a little wine, and though I 
was almost afraid lest in such com- 
pany I seem foolish, I went. You should 
have heard Karl talk to those leaders, 
my boy! It was wonderful, and I sat 
and drank in every word. One of the 

[28] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

great men was urging that the time 
had come for some desperate action. 
'Nothing but a bloody revolution can 
help the working people, Herr Marx,' 
he said. But Karl smiled quietly, and 
I thought I could see the old scornful 
curl of his lip as he said: 'Revolution? 
Y es, but not yet, Herr, not yet, and per- 
haps not a bloody one at all/ Ach, 
what quiet power seemed to go with his 
words ! 

"After the little crowd broke up Karl 
took me with him to his office. Then I 
learned that he was the editor of the 
Rhenische Zeitung, and that the articles 
i had read in the paper pleading ' for 
the poor and oppressed and denouncing 
the government were written by him. 
I felt almost afraid of him then, so won- 
derful it seemed that he should have 
become so great and wise. But Karl 
soon put all my fears to rest, and made 

[29] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

me forget everything except that we 
were boys from home enjoying the 
memories of old times. 

"Well, I saw him often after that, 
for I joined the Democratic Club. Then 
the government suppressed the paper, 
and Karl went away to Paris. Before 
he went he came to say good bye and 
told me that he was to marry Jenny von 
Westphalen before going to Paris, and 
I told him that I was going to marry, 
too. 

"But we never thought that we should 
meet each other upon our honeymoons, 
as we did. I was at Bingen with my 
Barbara the day after our wedding when 
I heard someone calling my name, and 
when I turned to see who it was that 
called me there stood Karl and his Jenny 
laughing at me and my Barbara, and all 
of us were blushing like idiots. Such 

[30] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

happy days those were that we spent 
at old Bingen ! 

"I went back to Cologne, to work in 
the shop belonging to my Barbara's 
father, and Karl went to Paris. That 
was in forty-three. We heard from him 
sometimes, and later on we used to get 
copies of a paper, Vorwarts, which pub- 
lished articles by Karl and other great 
men. Bakunin wrote for it, I remem- 
ber, and so did Heine and Herwegh, our 
sweet singers. 

"That paper was stopped, too. We 
heard that Guizot had suppressed the 
paper and ordered Karl and some' of 
the other writers to be expelled from 
France. It was Alexander von Hum- 
boldt who persuaded Guizot, so it was 
said. I got a letter from Karl to say 
that he had settled in Brussels with his 
wife and that there was a baby, a lit- 

[31] 



THE MAEX HE KNEW 

tie Jenny, eight months old. Our little 
Barbara was just the same age. 

"Not long after that letters came to 
the club asking for Karl's address. 
They were from Engels, of whom I had 
never heard before. I would not give 
the address until we found out that 
Engels was a true friend and comrade. 
We were all afraid, you see, lest some 
enemy wanted to hurt Karl. It was 
good, though, that I could send the ad- 
dress to Engels, for I believe that he 
sent some money to help Karl out of a 
very hard struggle. If we had known 
that he was in trouble we, his friends in 
Cologne, would have sent money to 
help, but Karl was too proud I suppose 
to let his trouble be known to us. 



III. 

"It was in the winter of 1847 that I 

[32] 

s 




FREDERICK ENGELS. 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

saw him again, in London. For months 
all the workingmen's societies had been 
agitated over the question of forming 
an international association with a 
regular programme, which Karl had 
been invited to draw up. A congress 
was to be held in London for the pur- 
pose of considering Karl's programme 
and I was sent by the Cologne comrades 
as a delegate. All the members 'chip- 
ped in' to pay my expenses, and I was 
very happy to go — happy because I 
should see him again. 

"So I was present at the rooms of 
the Arbeiterbildungsverein, in Great 
Windmill Street, when Karl read the 
declaration of principles and programme 
he had prepared. That was the Com- 
munist Manifesto, you know." 

"What ! were you really present when 
that immortal declaration of the inde- 
pendence of our class was read, Hans?" 

[33] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

"Aye, lad, I was present during all 
the ten days the congress lasted. Never, 
never shall I forget how our Karl read 
that declaration. Like a man inspired 
he was. I, who have heard Bernstein 
and Niemann and many another great 
actor declaim the lines of famous 
classics, never heard such wonderful 
declamation as his. We all sat spell- 
bound and still as death while he read. 
Tears of joy trickled down my cheeks, 
and not mine alone. When he finished 
reading there was the wildest cheering. 
I lost control of myself and kissed him 
on both cheeks, again and again. He 
liked not that, for he was always 
ashamed to have a fuss made over him. 

"But Karl — he always insisted that 
I should call him 'Karl/ as in boyhood 
days — had shown us that day his inner 
self; bared the secret of his heart, you 
might say. The workers of all countries 

[34] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

must unite — only just that, unite! And 
that night, after the long session of the 
congress, when he took me away with 
Engels and a few other friends — I re- 
member that Karl Pfander was one — 
he could speak of little else: the work- 
ers must be united somehow, and who- 
ever proposed further divisions instead 
of unity must be treated as a traitor. 

"Some there were who had not his 
patience. Few men have, my lad, for 
his was the patience . of a god. They 
wanted 'action/ 'action/ 'action/ and 
some of them pretended that Karl was 
just a plain coward, afraid of action. 
There was one little delegate, a French- 
man, who tried to get me to vote against 
the 'coward Marx' — me that had known 
Karl since we were little shavers to- 
gether, and that knew him to be fear- 
less and lion-hearted. I just picked the 
creature up and shook him like a ter- 

[35] 



THE MAKX HE KNEW 

rier shakes a rat and he squealed bit- 
terly. I don't think he called Karl a 
coward again during the congress. 

"Of course, Karl had courage enough 
for anything. But he was too wise to 
imagine that any good could come from 
a few thousand untrained workingmen, 
armed with all sorts of implements, dan- 
gerous most to themselves, challenging 
the trained hosts of capitalist troops. 
That was the old idea of 'Revolution/ 
you know, and it took more courage to 
advocate the long road of patience than 
it would take to join in a silly riot. And 
Karl showed them that, too, by his calm 
look and scornful treatment of their cry 
for 'action/ The way he silenced the 
noisy followers of Wilhelm Weitling — 
who was not a bad fellow, mind — was 
simply wonderful to see. Oh, he was 
a born leader of men, was Karl. 

"When the congress was all over, I 

[36J 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

meant to stay a few days in London to 
see the great city. Barbara had a sister 
living over in Dean street and so it 
would cost me nothing to stay. But 
Karl came to me and begged me to go 
back by way of Brussels. He and 
Engels were returning there at once, 
and would like to have me go with them. 
1 didn't want to go at first, but when 
Karl said that there were some messages 
he wanted me to take back to Cologne, 
why, of course, I went. 

"Ach, what a glorious time we had on 
that journey to Brussels! Sometimes 
Karl and Engels would talk seriously 
about the great cause, and I just listened 
and kept my mouth shut while my ears 
were wide open. At other times they 
would throw off their seriousness as a 
man throws off a coat, and then they 
would tell stories and sing songs, and 
of course I joined in. People say — 

[37] 



THE MAKX HE KNEW 

people that never knew the real Karl — 
that he was gloomy and sad, that he 
couldn't smile. I suppose that is because 
they never saw the simple Karl that I 
knew and loved, but only Marx, the 
great leader and teacher, with a thou- 
sand heavy problems burdening his 
mind. But the Marx that I knew — my 
friend Karl — was human, boy, very 
human. He could sing a song, tell a 
good story, and enjoy a joke, even at 
his own expense." 

A smile lit up the face of the Young 
Comrade. "I'm so glad of that, Hans," 
he said. "I've always been told that 
he was a sad man, without a sense of 
humor; that he was never known to 
unbend from his stiff gravity. But you 
say that he was not so; that he could 
laugh and Joke and sing: I like him 
better so." 

Old Hans seemed not to hear the 

[38] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

words of the Young Comrade, though 
he was silent while they were spoken. 
A faint smile played around his lips, 
and the far-away expression of his eyes 
told that the smile belonged to the mem- 
ory of other days. It was dark now in 
the little shop ; only the flickering light 
of the fitful fire in the tiny grate enabled 
the Young Comrade to see his friend. 

It was the Young Comrade who broke 
the silence at last: "Tell me more, 
Hans, for I am still hungry to learn 
about him." 

The old man nodded and turned to 
put some chips upon the fire in the 
grate. Then he continued : 

"It was about the last of February, 
1848, that we got the first copies of the 
Communist Manifesto at Cologne. Only 
a day or two before that we had news 
of the outbreak of the Revolution in 
Paris. I have still my copy of the 

[39] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

Manifesto which Karl sent me from 
Paris. 

"You see, he had been expelled from 
Brussels by order of the Government. 
Prussia had requested this, so Karl 
wrote me, and he was arrested and or- 
dered to leave Belgium at once. So he 
went at once to Paris. Only a week 
before that the Provisional Government 
had sent him an official invitation to 
come back to the city from which Guizot 
had expelled him. It was like a con- 
queror that he went, you may imagine. 

"Boy, you can never understand what 
we felt in those days. Things are not 
so any more. We all thought that the 
day of our victory was surely nigh. Karl 
had made us believe that when things 
started in France the proletariat of all 
Europe would awaken: 'When the Gal- 
lican cock crows the German workers 
will rise/ he used to say. And now the 

[40] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

cock's crowing had been heard! The 
Revolution was successful in France — 
so we thought — and the people were 
planting trees of liberty along the 
boulevards. 

"Here in England, too, the Spirit of 
the Revolution was abroad with her 
flaming torch. The Chartists had come 
together, and every day we expected to 
hear that the monarchy had been over- 
thrown and a Social Republic estab- 
lished. Of course,, we knew that Char- 
tism was a 'bread and butter question' 
at the bottom, and that the Chartists' 
cause was ours. 

"Well, now that we had heard the 
Gallican cock, we wanted to get things 
started in Germany, too. Every night 
we held meetings at the club in Cologne 
to discuss the situation. Some of us 
wanted to begin war at once. You see, 
the Revolution was in our blood like 

[41] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

strong wine: we were drunk with the 
spirit, lad. 

"When Karl wrote that we must wait, 
that we must have patience, there was 
great disappointment. We thought that 
we should begin at once, and there were 
some who said that Karl was afraid, but 
I knew that they were wrong, and told 
them so. There was a fierce discussion 
at the meeting one night over a letter 
which I had received from Karl, and 
which he wanted me to read to the mem- 
bers. 

"George Herwegh was in Paris, so the 
letter said, and was trying hard to raise 
a legion of German workingmen to 
march into the Fatherland and begin 
the fight. This, Karl said, was a ter- 
rible mistake. It was useless, to begin 
with, for what could such a legion of 
tailors and cigarmakers and weavers do 
against the Prussian army? It was 

[42] 



THE MAEX HE KNEW 

plain that the legion would be annihil- 
ated. Besides, it would hurt the cause 
in another way by taking out of Paris 
thousands of good revolutionists who 
were needed there. 

" 'Tell the comrades/ he wrote, 'that 
it is not a question of cowardice or fear, 
but of wisdom. It takes more courage 
to live for the long struggle than to go 
out and be shot.' He wanted the com- 
rades to wait patiently and to do all 
they could to persuade their friends in 
Paris not to follow Herwegh's advice. 
Most of the Germans in Paris followed 
Karl's advice, but a few followed Her- 
wegh and marched into Baden later on, 
to be scattered by the regular troops as 
chaff is scattered by the wind. 

"The German comrades in Paris sent 
us a special manifesto, which Karl 
wrote, and we were asked to distribute 
it among the working people. That 

[43] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

would be a good way to educate the 
workers, Karl wrote to our committee, 
but I tell you it seemed a very small 
thing to do in those trying times, and 
it didn't satisfy the comrades who were 
demanding more radical revolutionary 
action. Why, even I seemed to forget 
Karl's advice for a little while. 

"On the 13th of March— you'll re- 
member that was the day on which 
more than a hundred thousand Chartists 
gathered on Kennington Common — the 
revolution broke out in Vienna. Then 
things began to move in Cologne, too. 
As soon as the news came from Vienna, 
August von Willich, who had been an 
artillery officer, led a big mob right into 
the Cologne Council Chamber. I was 
in the mob and shouted as loud as any- 
body. We demanded that the authori- 
ties should send a petition to the King, 

[44] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

in the name of the city, demanding free- 
dom and constitutional government. 

"And then on the 18th, the same day 
that saw the people of Berlin fighting 
behind barricades in the streets — a 
great multitude of us Cologne men 
marched through the streets, led by Pro- 
fessor Gottfried Kinkel, singing the 
Marseillaise and carrying the forbidden 
flag of revolution, the black, red and 
gold tricolor." 

"And where was he — Marx — during 
all this time?" asked the Young Com- 
rade. 

"In Paris with Engels. We thought 
it strange that he should be holding 
aloof from the great struggle, and even 
I began to lose faith in him. He had 
told us that the crowing of the Galli- 
can cock would be the sign for the revo- 
lution to begin, yet he was silent. It 
was not till later that I learned from his 

[45] 



THE MAEX HE KNEW 

own lips that he saw from the start that 
the revolution would be crushed; that 
the workers opportunity would not 
come until later. 



IV. 

"He told me that when he came to 
Cologne with Engels. That was either 
the last of April or the beginning of 
May, I forget which. My wife rushed 
in one evening and said that she had 
seen Karl going up the street. I had 
heard that he was expected, but thought 
it would not be for several days. So 
when Barbara said that she had seen 
him on the street, I put on my things 
in a big hurry and rushed off to the club. 
There was a meeting that night, and I 
felt pretty sure that Karl would get 
there. 

[46] 




FERDINAND LASSALLE. 



THE MABX HE KNEW 

"When the meeting was more than 
half through, I heard a noise in the 
back of the hall and turned to see Karl 
and Engels making their way to the 
platform. There was another man with 
them, a young fellow, very slender and 
about five feet six in height, handsome 
as Apollo and dressed like a regular 
dandy. I had never seen this young 
man before, but from what I had heard 
and read I knew that it must be Fer- 
dinand Lassalle. 

"They both spoke at the meeting. 
Lassalle's speech was full of fire and 
poetry, but Karl spoke very quietly and 
slowly. Lassalle was like a great actor 
declaiming, Karl was like a teacher ex- 
plaining the rules of arithmetic to a lot 
of schoolboys." 

"And did you meet Lassalle, too?" 
asked the Young Comrade in awed 
tones. 

[47] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

"Aye, that night and many times 
after that. Karl greeted me warmly and 
introduced me to Lassalle. Then we 
went out for a drink of lager beer — 
just us four — Karl, Lassalle, Engels 
and me. They told me that they had 
come to start another paper in the place 
of the one that had been suppressed 
five years before. Money had been 
promised to start it, Karl was to be the 
chief editor and Engels his assistant. 
The new paper was to be called the Neue 
Rhenische Zeitung and Freiligrath, 
George Weerth, Lassalle, and many oth- 
ers, were to write for it. So we drank 
a toast to the health and prosperity of 
the new paper. 

"Well, the paper came out all right, 
and it was not long before Karl's at- 
tacks upon the government brought 
trouble upon it. The middle class stock- 
holders felt that he was too radical, and 

[48] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

when he took the part of the French 
workers, after the terrible defeat of 
June, they wanted to get rid of their 
chief editor. There was no taming a 
man like Karl. 

"One day I went down to the office 
with a notice for a committee of which 
I was a member, and Karl introduced 
me to Michael Bakunin, the great Rus- 
sian Anarchist leader. Karl never got 
along very well with Bakunin and there 
was generally war going on between 
them. 

"Did you ever hear of Robert Blum, 
my lad? Ever read the wonderful 
verses Freiligrath wrote about him? I 
suppose not. Well, Blum was a moder- 
ate Democrat, a sort of Liberal who be- 
longed to the Frankfort National As- 
sembly. When the insurrection of Oc- 
tober, 1848, broke out in Vienna Blum 
was sent there by the National As- 

[49] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

sembly, the so-called 'parliament of the 
people/ 

"He assumed command of the revo- 
lutionary forces and was captured and 
taken prisoner by the Austrian army 
and ordered to be shot. I remember 
well the night of the ninth of February 
when the atrocious deed was committed. 
We had a great public meeting. The 
hall was crowded to suffocation. I 
looked for Karl, but he was nowhere to 
be seen. He was a very busy man, you 
see, and had to write a great deal for 
his paper at night. 

"It was getting on for ten o'clock 
when Karl appeared in the hall and 
made his way in silence to the platform. 
Some of the comrades applauded him, 
but he raised his hand to silence them. 
We saw then that he held a telegram 
in his hand, and that his face was as 
pale as death itself. We knew that 

[50] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

something terrible had happened, and 
a great hush fell over the meeting. Not 
a sound could be heard until Karl be- 
gan to read. 

"The telegram was very brief and 
very terrible. Robert Blum had been 
shot to death in Vienna, according to 
martial law, it said. Karl read it with 
solemn voice, and I thought that I could 
see the murder taking place right there 
in the hall before my eyes. I suppose 
everybody felt just like that, for there 
was perfect silence — the kind of silence 
that is painful — for a few seconds. Then 
we all broke out in a perfect roar of 
fury and cheers for the Revolution. 

"I tried to speak to Karl after the 
meeting, but he brushed me aside and 
hurried away. His face was terrible to 
behold. He was the Revolution itself 
in human shape. As I looked at him I 

[51] 



THE MAKX HE KNEW 

knew that he would live to avenge poor 
Blum. 

"Blum's death was followed by the 
coup de' etat. The King appointed a 
new ministry and the National As- 
sembly was dissolved. The Neue 
Rhenische Zeitung came out then with 
a notice calling upon all citizens to 
forcibly resist all attempts to collect 
taxes from them. That meant war, of 
course, war to the knife, and we all 
knew it. 

"Karl was arrested upon a charge of 
treason, inciting people to armed resist- 
ance to the King's authority. We all 
feared that it would go badly with him. 
There was another trial, too, Karl and 
Engels and a comrade named Korff, 
manager of the paper, were placed on 
trial for criminal libel. I went to this 
trial and heard Karl make the speech 
for the defence. The galleries were 

[52] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

crowded and when he got through they 
applauded till the rafters shook. 'If 
Marx can make a speech like that at the 
'treason' trial, no jury will convict/ was 
what everybody in the galleries said. 

"When we got outside — oh, I forgot 
to say that the three defendants were 
acquitted, didn't I? Well, when we got 
outside, I told Karl what all the com- 
rades, and many who were not com- 
rades at all, were saying about his de- 
fence. He was pleased to hear it, I be- 
lieve, but all that he would say was, 'I 
shall do much better than that, Hans, 
much better than that. Unless I'm mis- 
taken, I can make the public prosecutor 
look like an idiot, Hans.' 

"You can bet that I was at the 
'treason' trial two days later. I pressed 
Karl's hand as he went in, and he looked 
back and winked at me as mischievously 
as possible, but said not a word. The 

[53] 



THE MAEX HE KNEW 

lawyers for the government bitterly at- 
tacked Karl and the two other members 
of the executive of the Democratic Club 
who were arrested with him. But 
their abuse was mostly for Karl. He 
was the one they were trying to strike 
down, any fool could see that. 

"Well, when the case for the prose- 
cution was all in, Karl began to talk to 
the jury. He didn't make a speech ex- 
actly, but just talked as he always did 
when he sat with a few friends over a 
glass of lager. In a chatty sort of way, 
he explained the law to the jury, showed 
where the clever lawyers for the gov- 
ernment had made big mistakes, and 
proved that he knew the law better than 
they did. After that he gave them a 
little political lecture, you might say. 
He explained to them just how he looked 
at the political questions — always from 
the standpoint of the working people. 

[54] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

"Sitting beside me was an old man, a 
Professor of Law they told me he was. 
He sat there with his eyes fastened 
upon Karl, listening with all his ears to 
every word. 'Splendid! Splendid! 
Wonderful logic/ I heard him say to 
himself. 'What a lawyer that man 
would make!' I watched the faces of 
the jury and it was plain to see that 
Karl was making a deep impression 
upon them, though they were all mid- 
dle class men. Even the old judge for- 
got himself and nodded and smiled 
when Karl's logic made the prosecution 
look foolish. You could see that the 
old judge was admiring the wonderful 
mind of the man before him. 

"Well, the three prisoners were ac- 
quitted by the jury and Karl was greatly 
pleased when the jury sent one of their 
members over to say that they had 
passed a vote of thanks to 'Doctor Marx' 

[55] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

for the very interesting and instructive 
lecture he had given them. I tell you, 
boy, I was prouder than ever of Karl 
after that, and went straight home and 
wrote letters to half a dozen people in 
Treves that I knew, telling them all 
about Karl's great speech. You see, I 
knew that he would never send word 
back there, and I wanted everybody in 
the old town to know that Karl was 
making a great name in the world. 

"The government got to be terribly 
afraid of Karl after that trial, and when 
revolutionary outbreaks occurred all 
through the Rhine Province, the follow- 
ing May, they suppressed the paper and 
expelled Karl from Prussia. 

"We had a meeting of the executive 
committee to consider what was to be 
done. Karl said that he was going to 
Paris at once, and that his wife and 
children would follow next day. Engels 

[56] 



THE MAEX HE KNEW 

was going into the Palatinate of Ba- 
varia to fight in the ranks, with An- 
necke, Kinkel, and Carl Schurz. All 
the debts in connection with the paper 
had been paid, he told us, so that no 
dishonor could attach to its memory. 

"It w T as not until afterward that we 
heard how the debts of the paper had 
been paid. Karl had pawned all the 
silver things belonging to his wife, and 
sold lots of furniture and things to get 
the money to pay the debts. They were 
not his debts at all, and if they were his 
expulsion would have been a very good 
reason for leaving the debts unpaid. 
But he was not one of that kind. Hon- 
est as the sun, he was. It was just like 
him to make the debts his own, and to 
pinch himself and his family to pay 
them. More than once Karl and his 
family had to live on dry bread in 
Cologne in order to keep the paper 

[57] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

going. My Barbara found out once in 
some way that Karl's wife and baby 
didn't have enough to eat, and when she 
came home and told me we both cried 
ourselves to sleep because of it." 

"Could none of the comrades help 
them, Hans?" 

"Ach, that was pretty hard, my boy, 
for Karl was very proud, and I guess 
Jenny was prouder still. Barbara and 
1 put our heads together and says she: 
'We must put some money in a letter 
and send it to him somehow, in a way 
that he will never know where it came 
from, Hans.' Karl knew my writing, 
but not Barbara's, so she wrote a lit- 
tle letter and put in all the money she 
had saved up. 'This is from a loyal 
comrade who knows that Doctor Marx 
and his family are in need of it/ she 
wrote. Then we got a young comrade 
who was unknown to Karl and Engels 

[58] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

to deliver the letter to Karl just as he 
was leaving for his office one morning. 

"Barbara and I were very happy that 
day when we knew that Karl had re- 
ceived the money, but bless your life I 
don't believe it did him any good at all. 
He just gave it away." 

"Gave away the money — that was giv- 
ing away his children's bread — almost. 
Did he do that?" 

"Well, all I know is that I heard next 
day that Karl had visited that same 
evening, a comrade who was sick and 
poor and in deep distress, and that when 
he was leaving he had pressed money 
into the hand of the comrade's wife, tell- 
ing her to get some good food and wine 
for her sick husband. And the amount 
of the money he gave her was exactly 
the same as that we had sent to him in 
the morning. 

"Karl was always so. He was the 

[59] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

gentlest, kindest-hearted man I ever 
knew in my life. He could suffer in 
silence himself, never complaining, but 
he could not stand the sight of another's 
misery. He'd stop anything he was 
doing and go out into the street to com- 
fort a crying child. Many and many a 
time have I seen him stop on the street 
to watch the children at play, or to pick 
up some crying little one in his great 
strong arms and comfort it against his 
breast. Never could he keep pennies in 
his pocket ; they all went to comfort the 
children he met on the streets. Why, 
when he went to his office in the morn- 
ings he would very often have from two 
to half a dozen children clinging around 
him, strange children who had taken a 
fancy to him because he smiled kindly 
at them and patted their heads. 

"I heard nothing from Karl for quite 
a while after he went to Paris. We won- 

[60] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

clered, Barbara and I, why he did not 
write. Then, one day, about three 
months after he had gone to Paris, came 
a letter from .London and we saw at once 
that it was in his handwriting. He'd 
been expelled from Paris again and com- 
pelled to leave the city within twenty- 
four hours, and he and his family were 
staying in cheap lodgings in Camber- 
well. He said that everything was going 
splendidly, but never a word did he say 
about the terrible poverty and hardship 
from which they were suffering. 



V 
"Well, a few months after that, I man- 
aged to get into trouble with the au- 
thorities at Cologne, along with a few 
other comrades. We heard that we were 
to be arrested and knew that we could 

[61] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

expect no mercy. So Barbara and I 
talked things over and we decided to 
clear out at once, and go to London. 
We sold our few things to a good com- 
rade, and with the money made our way 
at once to join Barbara's sister in Dean 
street. I never dreamed that we should 
find Karl living next door to us. 

"But we did. Nobody told me about 
him — I suppose that nobody in our 
house knew who he was — but a few 
days after we arrived I saw him pass 
and ran out and called to him. My, he 
looked so thin and worn out that my 
heart ached! But he was glad to see 
me and grasped my hand with both of 
his. Karl could shake hands in a way 
that made you feel he loved you more 
than anybody else in all the world. 

"In a little while he had told me 
enough for me to understand why he 
was so pale and thin. If it were not 

[62] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

for hurting his feelings, I could have 
cried at the things he told me. He and 
the beautiful Jenny without food some- 
times, and no bed to lie upon! And it 
seemed all the worse to me because I 
knew how well they had been reared, 
how they had been used to solid com- 
fort and even luxury. 

"But it was not from Karl that I 
learned the worst. He was always try- 
ing to hide the worst. Never did I hear 
of such a man as he was for turning 
things bright side upwards. But Conrad 
Schramm, who was related to Barbara 
— a sort of second cousin, I think — 
lodged in the same house with us. 
Schramm was the closest friend Karl 
and Jenny had in London then, and he 
told me things that made my heart 
bleed. Why, when a little baby was 
born to them, soon after they came to 
London, there was no money for a doc- 

[63] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

tor, nor even to buy a cheap cradle for 
the little thing. 

"For years that poverty continued. I 
used to see Karl pretty near every day 
until I fell and hurt my head and broke 
my leg in two places and was kept in 
the hospital many months. Barbara 
had to go out to work then, washing 
clothes for richer folks, and we couldn't 
offer to help dear old Karl as we would. 
So we just pretended that we didn't 
know anything about the poverty that 
was making him look so haggard and 
old. Karl would have died from the 
worry, I believe, if it had not been for 
the children. They kept him young and 
cheered him up. He might not have 
had anything but dry bread to eat for 
days, but he would come down the 
street laughing like a great big boy, a 
crowd of children tugging at his coat 
and crying 'Daddy Marx ! Daddy Marx ! 

[64] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

Daddy Marx!' at the top of their little 
voices. 

"He used to come and see me at the 
hospital sometimes. No matter how 
tired and worried he might be — and I 
could tell that pretty well by looking at 
his face when he didn't Know that I was 
looking — he always was cheerful with 
me. He wanted to cheer me up, you 
see, so he told me all the encouraging 
news about the movement — though 
there wasn't very much that was en- 
couraging — and then he would crack 
jokes and tell stories that made me 
laugh so loud that all the other patients 
in the room would get to laughing too. 

"I told him one day about a little 
German lad in a bed at the lower end 
of the ward. Poor little chap, he had 
been operated on several times, but there 
was no hope. He was bound to die, the 
nurse told me. When I told Karl the 

[65] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

tears came into his eyes and he kept on 
moaning, 'Poor little chap! So young! 
Poor little chap!' He went down and 
talked with him for an hour or more, 
and I could hear the boy's laughter ring 
through the long hospital ward. We'd 
never heard him laugh before, for no 
one ever came to see him, poor lonesome 
little fellow. 

"Karl always used to spend some of 
his time with the little chap after that. 
He would bring books and read to him 
in his mother tongue, or tell him won- 
derful stories. The poor little chap was 
so happy to see him and always used to 
kiss 'Uncle Mick/ as Karl taught the 
boy to call him. And when the little 
fellow died, Karl wept just as though 
the lad had been his own kin, and in- 
sisted upon following him to the grave." 
"Ah, that was great and noble, Hans ! 

[66] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

How he must have felt the great uni- 
versal heart-ache!" 

"I used to go to the German Com- 
munist Club to hear Karl lecture. That 
was years later, in the winter of 1856, 
I think. Karl had been staying away 
from the club for three or four years. 
He was sick of their faction fights, and 
disgusted with the hot-heads who were 
always crying for violent revolution. I 
saw him very often during the time that 
he kept away from the club, when Kinkel 
and Willich and other romantic middle- 
class men held sway there. Karl would 
say to me : 'Bah ! It's all froth, Hans, 
every bit of it is froth. They cry out 
for revolution because the words seem 
big and impressive, but they mustn't be 
regarded seriously. Pop-gun revolu- 
tionists they are !' 

"Well, as I was saying, I heard the 
lectures on political economy which Karl 

[67] 



THE MAKX HE KNEW 

gave at the club along in fifty-six and 
fifty-seven. He lectured to us just as 
he talked to the juries, quietly and 
slowly — like a teacher. Then he would 
ask us questions to find out how much 
we knew, and the man who showed that 
he had not been listening carefully got 
a scolding. Karl would look right at 
him and say: 'And did you really lis- 
ten to the lecture, Comrade So-and-So?' 
A fine teacher he was. 

"I think that Karl's affairs improved 
a bit just them. Engels used to help 
him, too. At any rate, he and his fam- 
ily moved out into the suburbs and I 
did not see him so often. My family 
had grown large by that time, and I had 
to drop agitation for a few years to 
feed and clothe my little ones. But I 
used to visit Karl sometimes on Sun- 
days, and then we'd talk over all that 
had happened in connection with the 

[68] 



THE MAEX HE KNEW 

movement. I used to take him the best 
cigars I could get, and he always rel- 
ished them. 

"For Karl was a great smoker. Nearly 
always he had a cigar in his mouth, 
and, ugh ! — what nasty things he had to 
smoke. We used to call his cigars 
'Marx's rope-ends/ and they were as 
bad as their name. That the terrible 
things he had to smoke, because they 
were cheap, injured his health there can 
be no doubt at all. I used to say that it 
was helping the movement to take him 
a box of decent cigars, for it was surely 
saving him from smoking old 'rope- 
ends.' 

"Poor Jenny! She was so grateful 
whenever I brought Karl a box of cigars. 
'So long as ne must smoke, friend 
Fritzsehe, it is better that he should 
have something decent to smoke. The 
cheap trash he smokes is bad for him, 

[69] 



THE MAKX HE KNEW 

I'm sure.' She knew, poor thing, that 
the poverty he endured for the great 
Cause was killing Karl by inches, as you 
might say. And I knew it, too, laddie, 
and it made my heart bleed." 

"Ah, he was a martyr, Hans — a mar- 
tyr to the cause of liberty. And 'the 
blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
Church,' always and everywhere," said 
the Young Comrade. 



VI 

Old Hans was silent for a few seconds. 
He gazed at the photograph above his 
bench like one enraptured. The Young 
Comrade kept silent, too, watching old 
Hans. A curious smile played about the 
old man's face. It was he who broke 
the silence at length. 

"Of course, you've heard about the 

[70] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

International, lad? Karl had that pic- 
ture taken just about the time that the 
International was started. Always 
promised me a picture he had, for years 
and years. And when he brought 
me that one Sunday he seemed half 
ashamed of himself, as if he thought it 
was too sentimental a thing for a seri- 
ous man to do. 'You'll soon get tired 
looking at it, Hans/ he said. 

"Ach, I remember that afternoon as 
though it were only day before yester- 
day. We were sitting smoking and talk- 
ing after dinner when Karl said : 'Hans, 
I've made up my mind that it is time 
things begun to move a bit — in connec- 
tion with the movement I mean. We 
must unite, Hans. All the workers 
ought to unite — can unite — must unite! 
We've got a good start in the visit of 
these French and German workingmen 
to the Universal Exhibition. The 

[71j 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

bourgeoisie have shown the way. It 
must be done/ Then he explained to 
me how the movement was to be 
launched, and i promised to help as 
much as possible in my union. Karl al- 
ways wanted to get the support of the 
unions, and many a time did he come 
to me to get me to introduce some mo- 
tion in my union. 

"It was tuat way when the great Civil 
War broke out in America. Karl was 
mad at the way in which Gladstone and 
the middle class in general sided with 
the slave-holders of the South. You 
see, he not only took the side of the 
slaves, but he loved President Lincoln. 
He seemed never to get tired of praising 
Lincoln. One day he came to me and 
said with that quiet manner he had 
when he was most in earnest, 'Hans, we 
must do something to offset Gladstone's 
damned infernal support of the slave- 

[72] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

traders. We must show President Lin- 
coln that the working class in this coun- 
try feel and know that he is in the right. 
And Abraham Lincoln belongs to us, 
Hans; he's a son of the working class/ 

"He said a lot more in praise of Lin- 
coln, and told me how proud he was that 
the German Socialists had gone to the 
war, all enlisted in the Northern army; 
said he'd like to join with Weydemeyer, 
his old friend, who was fighting under 
Fremont. So earnest he was about it! 
Nobody could have guessed that the war 
meant ruin to him by cutting off his 
only regular income, the five dollars a 
week he got for writing for the New 
York Tribune — 1 think that was the 
name of the paper. 

"Well, he begged me to get resolu- 
tions passed at our union condemning 
Gladstone and supporting President 
Lincoln, and I believe that our union 

[73] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

was the first body of workingmen in 
England to pass such resolutions. But 
Karl didn't stop at that. He got the 
International to take the matter up with 
the different workingmen's societies, 
and meetings were held all over the 
country. And he kept so much in the 
background that very few people ever 
knew that it was Karl Marx who turned 
the tide of opinion in England to the side 
of Lincoln. And when Lincoln was mur- 
dered by that crazy actor, Booth, Karl 
actually cried. He made a beautiful 
speech, and wrote resolutions which 
were adopted at meetings all over the 
country. Ah, boy, Lincoln appreciated 
the support we gave him in those awful 
days of the war, and Karl showed me 
the reply Lincoln sent to the General 
Council thanking them for it. 

"Karl was always like that; always 
guiding the working people to do the 

[74] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

right thing, and always letting other 
people get the credit and the glory. He 
planned and directed all the meetings of 
tne workers demanding manhood suf- 
frage, in 1866, but he never got the 
credit of it. All for the cause, he was, 
and never cared for personal glory. For 
years he gave all his time to the Inter- 
national and never got a penny for all 
he did, though his enemies used to say 
that he was 'getting rich out of the 
movement/ 

"Ach, that used to make me mad — 
the way they lied about Karl. The 
papers used to print stories about the 
'Brimstone League/ a sort of 'inner 
circle' connected with the International, 
though we all knew there was never 
such a thing in existence. Karl was 
accused of trying to plan murders and 
bloody revolutions, the very thing he 
hated and feared above everything else. 

[75] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

Always fighting those who talked that 
way, he was ; said they were spies and 
hired agents of the enemy, trying to 
bring the movement to ruin. Didn't he 
oppose Weitling and Herwegh and 
Bakunin on that very ground? 

"I was with Karl when Lassalle vis- 
ited him, in 1862, and heard what he 
said then about foolish attempts to start 
revolutions by the sword. Lassalle had 
sent a Captain Schweigert to Karl a 
little while before that with a letter, 
begging Karl to help the Captain raise 
the money to buy a lot of guns for an 
insurrection. Karl had refused to have 
anything to do with the scheme, and 
Lassalle was mad about it. 'Your ways 
are too slow for me, my dear Marx/ he 
said. 'Why, it'll take a whole gener- 
ation to develop a political party of the 
proletariat strong enough to do any- 
thing.' 

[76] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

"Karl smiled in that quiet way he 
had and said: 'Yes, it's slow enough, 
friend Lassalle, slow enough. But we 
want brains for the foundation of our 
revolution — brains, not powder. We 
must have patience, lots of patience. 
Mushrooms grow up in a night and last 
only a day; oaks take a hundred years 
to grow, but the wood lasts a thousand 
years. And it's oaks we want, not mush- 
rooms/ " 

"How like Marx that was, Hans," 
said the Young Comrade then, "how 
patient and far-seeing! And what did 
Lassalle think of that?" 

"He never understood Karl, I think. 
Anyhow, Karl told me that Lassalle 
ceased to be his friend after that 
meeting. There was no quarrel, you 
understand, only Lassalle realized that 
he and Karl were far apart in their 
views. 'Lassalle is a clever man all 

: :' [77] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

right/ Karl used to say, 'but he wants 
twelve o'clock at eleven, like an impa- 
tient child/ And there's lots of folks 
like Lassalle in that respect, my lad; 
folks that want oaks to grow in a night 
like mushrooms. 

"Well, I stayed in the International 
until the very last, after the Hague Con- 
gress when it was decided to make New 
York the headquarters. That was a 
hard blow to me, lad. It looked to me 
as if Karl had made a mistake. I felt 
that the International was practically 
killed when the General Council was 
moved to America, and told Karl so. 
But he knew that as well as I did, only 
he couldn't help himself. 

" 'Yes, Hans, I'm afraid you're right. 
The International can't amount to 
much under the circumstances. But 
it had to be, Hans, it had to be. My 
health is very poor, and I'm about done 

[78] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

for, so far as fighting is concerned. I 
simply can't keep on fighting Bakunin 
and his crowd, Hans, and if I drop the 
fight the International will pass into 
Bakunin's control. And I'd rather see 
the organization die in America than 
live with Bakunin at the head ; it's bet- 
ter so, better so, Hans.' And it was 
then, when I heard him talk like that, 
and saw how old-looking he had grown 
in a few months, that I knew we must 
soon lose Karl." 



VII 

"But he did not die soon — he lived 
more than ten years after that, Hans," 
said the Young Comrade. "And ten 
years is a good long time." 

"Ach, ten years! But what sort of 
years were they? Tell me that," de- 

[79] 



THE MAEX HE KNEW 

t 

manded old Hans with trembling voice. 
"Ten years of sickness and misery — 
ten years of perdition, that's what they 
were, my lad! Didn't I see him waste 
away like a plant whose roots are 
gnawed by the worms ? Didn't I see his 
frame shake to pieces almost when that 
cough took hold of him? Aye, didn't I 
often think that I'd be glad to hear that 
he was dead — glad for his own sake, to 
think that he was out of pain at last? 

"Yes, he lived ten years, but he was 
dying all the while. He must have been 
in pain pretty nearly all the time, every 
minute an agony! 'Oh, I'd put an end 
to it all, Hans, if I didn't have to finish 
Capital/ he said to me once as we 
walked over Hampstead Heath, he lean- 
ing upon my arm. 'It's Hell to suffer 
so, year after year, but I must finish 
that book. Nothing I've ever done 
means so much as that to the move- 

[80] 



THE MAEX HE KNEW 

merit, and nobody else can do it. I must 
live for that, even though every breath 
is an agony/ 

"But he didn't live to finish his task, 
after all. It was left for Engels to put 
the second and third volumes in shape. 
A mighty good thing it was for the 
movement that there was an Engels to 
do it, I can tell you. Nobody else could 
have done it. But Engels was like a 
twin brother to Karl. Some of the com- 
rades were a bit jealous sometimes, and 
used to call Karl and Engels the 'Siam- 
ese twins/ but that made no difference 
to anybody. If it hadn't been for Engels 
Karl wouldn't have lived so long as he 
did, and half his work would never have 
been done. I never got so close to the 
heart of Engels as I did to Karl, but I 
loved him for Karl's sake, and because 
of the way he always stood by Karl 
through thick and thin. 

[81] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

"I can't bear to tell about the last 
couple of years— how I used to find Karl 
sick abed in one room and his wife, the 
lovely Jenny, in another room tortured 
by cancer. Terrible it was, and I used 
to go away from the house hoping that 
I might hear they were both dead and 
out of their misery forever. Only 
Engels seemed to think that Karl would 
get better. He got mad as a hatter when 
I said one day that Karl couldn't live. 
But when Jenny died Engels said to me 
after the funeral, It's all over with 
Marx now, friend Fritzsche; his life is 
finished, too/ And I knew that Engels 
spoke the truth. 

"And then Karl died. He died sit- 
ting in his arm chair, about three 
o'clock in the afternoon of the four- 
teenth of March, 1883. I heard the 
news that evening from Engels and 
went over to the house in Maitland 

[82] 



THE MAKX HE KNEW 

Park Road, and that night I saw him 
stretched out upon the bed, the old 
familiar smile upon his lips. I couldn't 
say a word to Engels or to poor Eleanor 
Marx — I could only press their hands in 
silence and fight to keep back the sobs 
and tears. 

"And then on the Saturday, at noon, 
he was buried in Highgate Cemetery, 
in the same grave with his wife. And 
while Engels was speaking over the 
grave, telling what a wonderful phil- 
osopher Karl was, my mind was wan- 
dering back over the years to Treves. 
Once more we were boys playing to- 
gether, or fighting because he would 
play with little Jenny von Westphalen ; 
once more I seemed to hear Karl telling 
stories in the schoolyard as in the old 
days. Once again it seemed as if we 
were back in the old town, marching 
through the streets shouting out the 
[83] 



THE MABX HE KNEW 

verses Karl wrote about the old teacher, 
poor old Herr von Hoist. 

"And then the scene changed and I 
was in Bingen with my Barbara, laugh- 
ing into the faces of Karl and his Jenny, 
and Karl was picking the bits of rice 
from his pockets and laughing at the 
joke, while poor Jenny blushed crimson. 
What Engels said at the grave I couldn't 
tell ; I didn't hear it at all, for my mind 
was far away. I could only think of the 
living Karl, not of the corpse they were 
giving back to Mother Earth. 

"It seemed to me that the scene 
changed again, and we were back in 
Cologne — Karl addressing the judge 
and jury, defending the working class, 
I listening and applauding like mad. 
And then the good old Lessner took my 
arm and led me away. 

"Ah, lad, it was terrible, terrible, go- 
ing home that afternoon and thmkiwg of 

[84] 



THE MARX HE KNEW 

Karl lying there in the cold ground. The 
sun could no longer shine for me, and 
even Barbara and the little grandchild, 
our Barbara's little Gretchen, couldn't 
cheer me. Karl was a great philosopher, 
as Engels said there at the graveside, 
but he was a greater man, a greater 
comrade and friend. They talk about 
putting up a bronze monument some- 
where to keep his memory fresh, but 
that would be foolish. Little men's 
memories can be kept alive by bronze 
monuments, but such men as Karl need 
no monuments. So long as the great 
struggle for human liberty endures 
Karl's name will live in the hearts of 
men. 

"Aye, and in the distant ages — when 
the struggle is over — when happy men 
and women read with wondering hearts 
of the days of pain which we endure — 
then Karl's name wM stffl be remem- 

[85] 



THE MARK HE KNEW 

bered. Nobody will know then that I, 
poor old Hans Fritzsche, went to school 
with Karl; that I played with him — 
fought with him — loved him for nearly 
sixty years. But no matter; they can 
never know Karl as I knew him" 

Tears ran down the old man's cheeks 
as he lapsed into silence once more, and 
the Young Comrade gently pressed one 
of the withered and knotted hands to 
his lips and went out into the night. 



it'wt 



woa 



